


I change shapes just to hide in this place

by grattiss12



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Johnlock Fluff, M/M, Teenlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 20:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1441276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grattiss12/pseuds/grattiss12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson endures fifteen years of slamming doors and split lips before he takes up smoking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I change shapes just to hide in this place

John Watson endures fifteen years of slamming doors and split lips before he takes up smoking; it feels as if he has made some sort of earth-shattering discovery when he realizes that the nicotine expands his lungs in a way that air never could. He feels as if his chest is full for the first time in years and wonders if the smoke is seeping into his heart; coursing through his veins until he is burned down to nothing but a pile of ash waiting for a summer breeze. He thinks it must feel nice to be scattered along the soft edges of the world, and decides then and there, in the quiet midnight of his room, that he will smoke until it kills him. He wonders if this feeling is an acceptable thing to die for. 

It does not take him long to realize, however, that his lungs are filling with smoke faster than he can exhale. They expand until he is sure his heart must be shrinking to compensate, and he desperately tries to squeeze his ribcage back together on the nights when silence and chain smoking leave him bursting at the seams. When the morning comes he finds bruises on his sides from where his own fingers dug too far.

*****

John tries to feel guilty when he hops on the first train to the elite college he intends on attending for the next two years; but it feels false even to his own ears when he tells his mother he’ll miss her. She mumbles something incoherent to him through her first glass of scotch of the day and John decides not to ask her to repeat herself. He is sure there is no kindness left in her bones to project onto her only son, so he leaves with a halfhearted wave goodbye and a train ticket to freedom. 

He hopes his roommate is a smoker. 

*****

Sherlock Holmes does not introduce himself to John, but rather informs him he knows all of his secrets. He calls it the science of deduction and John calls it bloody brilliant while simultaneously wondering if Sherlock can deduce that John’s heart is losing a battle against his lungs with every passing hour. 

*****

Sherlock is an impossible collection of height and wit and curls and if someone were to ask John to describe him he would not know where to start. Sometimes Sherlock bites his bottom lip while he’s reading, or stretches those lanky arms over his head after hours of experiments, and John is sure he has never been so mesmerized by a person before in his life. He wants to take Sherlock apart and reassemble him a million times over, just to become familiar with the curves of his spine, and the length of his fingers. 

John worries that Sherlock can see right into his head when he thinks things like this, but he can’t bring himself to regret the time he’s spent getting to know the rhythm of the younger boys footsteps, or the shallow breaths he often forgets to take. John constantly needs to force Sherlock to eat and to sleep; which Sherlock blames on his “caregiver tendencies” and John blames on the anxious flutter in his stomach whenever he wakes up to see the dark bags under his roommates eyes. 

*****

It is two months before John offers Sherlock a cigarette; he tries to avoid smoking in the room, in fear of Sherlock’s response, but sometimes midnight is too much for John to face with empty lungs and his fingers twitch for the familiar burn. Sherlock accepts graciously with a little grin and a ‘thought you would never ask’ and John sits next to him on the too small bed and watches as Sherlock blows smoke into the space above their heads. They sit in silence until John tells Sherlock that smoking is terrible for him, and Sherlock laughs; a sound that comes from somewhere in his toes and John is absolutely smitten. Sherlock smokes the cigarette down and then leans his head against the wall behind him; eyes dragging lazily to where John sits. 

John wants to spend the rest of his life right there; breathing in the smoke and the smell that is so entirely Sherlock and that scares him. He is afraid that it has only been 58 days and he is already willing to build the younger boy a space in the chaos of his cramped ribcage. He wonders if Sherlock can tell what he’s thinking; a part of him hopes he can. 

John is sure they sit there for years; laughing and whispering and smoking the rest of the pack, before they fall into the comfortable silence of two tired boys. John does not remember falling asleep, but when morning comes he can feel his legs tangled with another's, and he wonders how he possibly survived without the contact. 

*****

Sherlock Holmes kisses with the sort of passion John wishes he could capture in time. He wants to press Sherlock into the ridges of his spine, the way his mother taught him to press flowers into notebooks when he was a child. Sherlock’s kisses are all hands, and teeth, and fire and John cannot get enough, will never get enough. He presses himself closer to the taller boy and wishes he could harvest the heat in his chest to melt into Sherlock completely. He wants to be submerged headfirst into the pale skinned and labored breathed boy in front of him, he wants Sherlock to pick him apart piece by piece and engrave his fingerprints on his bones. 

John is sure he must taste like cigarettes and stale promises, but Sherlock does not stop for breath until their lungs are about to burst; John thinks this would be the greatest way to go. Sherlock’s eyes are brighter than John thinks possible and he wants to stand knee-deep in the ocean of their gaze. 

John rests his head on Sherlock’s chest and wonders how many times the world has ended; he is sure the fire he feels in his core must be the earth hurtling towards the sun at the speed of Sherlock’s rapid heart beats. 

He wants to be found in the rubble with his hands buried in Sherlock’s hair, John’s mouth forming his name. 

*****

Sherlock and John become Sherlock and John in a rush of whispered promises and hasty kisses in quiet corridors. Sherlock whispers their classmates darkest secrets in biology and John calls him amazing while walking his fingers along the curve of his roommates spine.  
Sherlock shudders and gives John a look of absolute wonder, like John is one of his hopeless experiments that went just right. John likes the idea of being just right for Sherlock, and wishes they weren’t in a room full of their peers so he could run his fingers through his hair.

John settles for resting his arm on the back of Sherlock’s chair and drawing patterns into his shoulder when no one is looking. 

*****

Sherlock’s promises feel more solid than the ones his mother used to make; they don’t float away in the breeze like the leaves John used to rake in the fall. For the first time in his life, John feels like he doesn’t need a cigarette to fill his too-big lungs in his too-small chest, because Sherlock’s somehow managed to grow his heart back to the size it was when his father wasn’t a runaway and his mother wasn’t a drunk. 

When John tells Sherlock he loves him there is nothing but silence. John wants to pick the words out of the air and store them back on the dusty shelves of his ribcage for someone to find when the world finally manages to crack him open. Instead they float there, settling with the dust and the paper’s lying on the floor. Sherlock still does not move. 

John bites his lip and tries to keep the tremor out of his voice as he spits apologies into the empty air, he closes his arms around his stomach and feels for the indents of his fingertips he was sure Sherlock had already erased. He meets the other boys eyes and its like the ice cracks; the blue currents turn into a storm and suddenly Sherlock is right there, and his lips are pressed against John’s neck, his collarbones, hands sliding down his sides. John’s back hits the wall, and Sherlock nuzzles his head into the crook of his neck, breathing heavily and kissing his way up John’s jaw. 

“Say it again,” Sherlock commands of him, and John doesn’t deny him the request; whispering it into Sherlock’s hair, his chest, his mouth, mouth, mouth, until Sherlock is saying it back, pressing it into his sternum, breathing it into his soul. 

Sherlock ghosts his fingers over John’s sides, and it is all fire; flames lick at his heart and his lungs and John is sure he will never need another cigarette as long as he lives.


End file.
